Personality Trait Stability in Borderline Personality Disorder
This paper critically reviews Hopwood et al.'s (2009) longitudinal study on personality trait stability in individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The study tracked 130 BPD patients and 302 controls with other personality disorders over six years, using multiple personality assessments. The review summarizes key findings — that structural stability was comparable across groups, but differential and ipsative stability were lower in BPD patients, especially in neuroticism and conscientiousness — and evaluates the study's methodology, clinical implications, and limitations. The paper also situates the findings within the broader, contested diagnostic history of BPD.
- Introduction: BPD and the Problem of Personality Stability: Historical and conceptual context for BPD diagnosis
- Overview of the Hopwood et al. Study: Study design, participants, and central hypothesis
- Key Findings on Trait Stability: Differential and ipsative stability lower in BPD group
- Clinical Implications of the Results: How trait instability should inform BPD treatment
- Methodological Critique: Tautology risk and limits of self-report measures
- Conclusion: What the Study Adds to BPD Literature: Study confirms instability but raises diagnostic questions
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves fluidly from summarizing the source article to offering a pointed critique, demonstrating the student's ability to both report and evaluate research.
- It contextualizes the study within the broader diagnostic history of BPD, grounding technical findings in a wider clinical narrative.
- The critique of potential tautology in the methodology is sophisticated, showing engagement with epistemological questions about diagnostic validity.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper models the critical article review format effectively. Rather than merely summarizing Hopwood et al., the author evaluates the study's methodology (noting the circular logic risk in accepting existing diagnoses), weighs its clinical usefulness, and positions the findings against prior literature, including the DSM criteria and Oldham (2005). This layered approach — summary, analysis, critique — is the hallmark of a strong graduate-level review.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with conceptual and historical context for BPD as a diagnosis, then introduces the study and its hypothesis. It proceeds through study design, findings, and clinical implications, before raising methodological concerns and concluding with a frank assessment of the study's contribution to the existing literature. This funnel-and-return structure keeps the argument coherent and grounded throughout.
Introduction: BPD and the Problem of Personality Stability
Personality disorders have a problematic diagnostic history in psychiatric literature. The idea of defining someone's "character" has challenged philosophers and research psychologists throughout the ages. Behind the characteristics defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as Axis II personality disorders (PDs) lies an assumption of a certain level of character stability in individuals classified as having schizoid personality disorder or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. One of the most controversial disorders defined by the DSM is borderline personality disorder (BPD), commonly characterized by an abnormal instability of personality traits and behaviors, rather than a state of abnormal stability.
Often, individuals with a diagnosis of BPD seem to defy characterization: occasionally they appear to embody the textbook criteria for the illness, and at other times they wildly deviate from it. They may show the characteristic idealization followed by reviling of significant others, then shift into socially avoidant behavior after feeling hurt and seeing their expectations for others go unmet. This pattern is profoundly different from that seen in consistently socially avoidant personality types, or in histrionic personality types who persistently seek out others to dramatize their real and imagined complaints.
To re-evaluate the diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder and its impact upon "several domains" of functioning "including interpersonal behavior, affect, and identity" seemed essential, according to Hopwood et al. (2009), in order to clarify the nature of this disorder. Hopwood and colleagues embarked upon a study published in the journal Abnormal Psychology entitled "The Stability of Personality Traits in Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder." The central hypothesis of the study was that apparent inconsistencies in the personality traits of BPD patients are not an indication of a problematic or inaccurate definition of the disorder, but rather are part of the illness itself (Hopwood et al., 2009, p. 806).
References
Hopwood, C. J., et al. (2009, November). The stability of personality traits in individuals with borderline personality disorder. Abnormal Psychology, 118(4), 806–815.
Oldham, J. M. (2004, July 1). Borderline personality disorder: An overview. Psychiatric Times. Retrieved July 19, 2010, from
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